St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1887-01-27
A STRANGE MURDER CASE.
A Seducer and Murderer Gets His De
serts.

Thomas jefferson Cluverius, a de-
scendant from President Tyler, was
hung at Richmond, Va, Jan. Ia, for
the murder in 1885 of Miss Lillian
Madison, his cousin and a direct de-
scendant of President Madison. The
prisoners nerve kept him up to the
| last on his last interview with his
relatives and the minister who attend
ed him he told them he was innocent
and went TO the gallows without finch
ing.
| The story of his crime, conviction
and respites is of intense dramatic in
terest. The body of good looking
young woman was found in the old
city reservoir at Richmond on the
morning of March IA, 1885. 1t was
pronounced by the coroner a case OF
suicide, and at the mOrgue the bndy
was identified by two young women as
that of friend, Frances Lillian Madi-
son, % years old. This would prob
ably been the last of the matter had
not reporter visited the scene of the
drowning and worked up murder
theory upon a chain of circumstantial
evidence. Detectives and police were
set to work, and in a short time
brought to light circumstances that
added strength to the murder theory.
A woman who had registered at the
American hotel on the 18th of March
under the name of Miss +. l.. Merton
was missing from the hotel, and her
disappearance and the finding of the
body about the same time furnished
the clew. While the O-called "Miss
Merton" was at the hotel she wrote
and received several notes, but one
directed by her was never delivered,
and after her departure from the hotel
it was torn to pieces by the clerk and
cast into the waste basket. The scraps
of this note and the envelope were
subsequently brought to light, and
when pasted together served as one of
the principal links in the chain which
convicted the murderer, it being ad-
dressed to "T. j. Cluverius."
Cluverius was Il young lawyer of
King and Queen county, of high So
cial standing and cousin to the dead
girl. He was engaged to be married
at the time to young woman of
wealth and position. He was known
to have been in Richmond on the 18th
of March, and was at once arrested
and brought to Richmond. He was
indicted in April for murder and his
trial began at the May term of the
court and continued for % days. The
prisoner pleaded not guilty. Nearly
200 witnesses were examined, and step
by step the evidence fixed upon the
prisoner the brand of seducer and
murderer. The evidence was entirely
circumstantial, and furnishes one of
IL. III Of
victiOn from such testimony on record.
Witness swOre to seeing Claverius
with the girl within few hundred
yards of the pond where the body was
found. In the trampled mud at the
ponds edge was found a watch-key
which was proved to have belonged to
Cluverius. This was the necessary
link. The remarkable feature of the
case is this Cluverius denied that he
had seen the girl during the fatal day.
If he had admitted being with her up
to the time the two were last seen to-
gether, and had declared that the
tch-key had been given as keep
sake, no. jury on earth could have con-
victed him or would have dared to de-
clare that the young woman could not
have wandered off alone, and been put
out of the way by ruffians. The jury
was but minute in making the YER
dict one of murder in the first degree,
and the prisoner was sentenced to be
hanged the next November. On an
appeal to the supreme court but one
voice dissented from confirming the
lower courts Judgment. He was re-
sentenced to be hanged Dec. 10, 1886,
but was respited by the governor until
yesterday upon an application for par
don or imprisonment for life.
A false "sOciety" sympathy was
worked up in Richmond and vicinity
in favor of Cluverius and petition to
the governor for his pardon was sign
ed by hundreds of people, but there
was no reasonable doubt of his guilt
and Gov. Lee deserves credit for re-
fusing to interfere with the course of
justice in his case.